Which holiday is more Christian: Passover or Easter?On first glance that might seem like a ridiculous question. Isn't Passover a "Jewish" holiday and Easter a "Christian" holiday?
Well, not exactly.
The earliest Christians did not celebrate "Easter".
They celebrated Passover.
After all, when did Jesus die? (On the eve of Passover)
When did He rise from the dead? (During the Feast of Unleavened Bread)
What holiday foreshadowed the sacrifice of the lamb of God? (Passover)
So why do Christians celebrate a holiday called Easter?
Do you even know what the word "Easter" means?
Have you ever wondered where that word came from?
That is something I always wondered about when I was growing up.
However, it was not until I started doing some research that I began to learn the truth.
Our old reference books actually told us the truth about these things.....
The Britannica Encyclopedia (1934) stated:
"EASTER (es’ter). Ostara, or Eastre, was the goddess of Spring in the religion of the ancient Angles and Saxons. Every April a festival was celebrated in her honor. With the beginnings of Christianity, the old gods were put aside. From then on the festival was celebrated in honor of the resurrection of Christ, but was still known as Easter after the old goddess."
So why do we celebrate "Easter"?
Well, the story goes back a long way - to the ancient Middle East.
Have you ever heard of "Ishtar" or "Ashtoreth"? Most of you probably have. They are ancient names of the same pagan fertility goddess. In fact, if you trace the various pagan fertility goddesses back far enough, they all trace back to Semiramis of ancient Babylon.
Over time, "Ashtoreth" and "Asherah" became "Ishtar" which eventually became "Eastre" and then finally "Easter", but it is all the same pagan fertility goddess.
Some other names of "Easter" over the centuries included Aphrodite from ancient Cyprus, Astarte from ancient Greece, Demeter from Mycenae, Kali from India and Ostara, a Norse goddess of fertility.
Easter "eggs" and bunny rabbits are pagan fertility symbols that celebrate this pagan fertility goddess, and they have been used as symbols for her for thousands of years.
So why do Christians celebrate "Easter"?
Jesus did not die on "Easter".
Do you want to know when Jesus died?
He died on the eve of Passover.
You see, in the "Old Testament", God had His people come up to Jerusalem three times per year. One of those times was for Passover.
During the very first Passover, God had the Jews take the blood of a lamb and put it on their doorposts so that the death angel would pass over their houses.
And do you know what doorposts are most commonly made of?
Wood.
And do you know where wood comes from?
From a tree.
So the message of that very first Passover was that the blood of the lamb on the tree covers us from the wrath of God.
Does that sound familiar?
It should.
It is the message of the cross - the blood of the lamb on the tree covers us from the wrath of God!
So for hundreds and hundreds of years, God had His people gather in the exact city where Christ would die, at the exact time of the year when He would die, and He had them celebrate a holiday that perfectly foreshadowed the sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah.
So why do Christians not celebrate the holiday of Passover?
Did you also know that Jesus celebrated Passover? The Last Supper was actually a Passover meal (just look it up in the Scriptures).
During the Last Supper Jesus said to do this meal in memory of Him.
And did you know that all of humanity will celebrate the Passover during the 1000 year reign of Christ (see Ezekiel 45-46)?
Did you know that "Easter" was celebrated by ancient civilizations such as the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, and the Philistines? Did you know that ritual pagan sex acts were involved with the celebration of "Easter"?
So why have we all forsaken a holiday which predicted the sacrifice of Jesus, which is full of symbolism about Jesus, which is during the precise time when Jesus died and rose again and which God tells us in the Scriptures to remember?
Why have we instead been celebrating a pagan fertility festival that is named after a pagan fertility goddess and is filled with pagan symbols and traditions?
The YouTube video below contains even more information on this.....
Perhaps it is time to reconsider a lot of the things that we have taken for granted.
The Bible has nothing to say about Easter.
But it has a ton to say about Passover.
If you do not know much about Passover, I would encourage you to pick up your Bible and to read about it. Passover is a truly extraordinary holiday that perfectly foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ every year for over a thousand years before Jesus arrived on earth.
So is Passover more Christian than Easter?
The truth is that there isn't even a comparison.
4 comments:
I realy appreciate this eye opening; it's wonderful. But my concern is that if the celebration of Ester had been promoting Christ accross the globe for these centuries, it's alright. After all, if we change the nomenclature and call it Passover, the focus will still be to picture the substitutionary death of Christ and make Him known to the world. My position is that all serious ministers of the gospel should rather contend for the significance and the purpose rather than the name. I come from a part of the world where there are many new converts to christianity from Islamic faith (especially women and chidren), who because of persecution, to preseve their little faith, we encourage them to follow their parents and husbands to the mosque if they (their parents and husbands)such command. But while bowing down, should do so for Christ in their hearts and not for Allah! I tell you, they are still serving the Lord and are rapturable. I think God is more concerned with His purpose than nomenclature.
"In fact, if you trace the various pagan fertility goddesses back far enough, they all trace back to Semiramis of ancient Babylon."
That is incorrect. Complete your research. You actually did a pretty good job as far as research goes, but fertility goddesses have been around as long as man has. They did not all come from ancient Babylon. There are many, many Goddesses concerned with fertility as well as many forgotten Goddesses (and Gods) whose names have been lost throughout the years of mankind's history.
We can only trace history of these things as far back as the great flood. Before that the only historical record we have it's the first 8 chapters of Genesis. Given that Noah and his family all worshiped the one true God, it would seem that all the false gods and goddesses must have come from a period around the first post flood civilisation, Babel, which means that we are looking at an origin in Nimrod, Semiramis & Tammuz.
Check out Deut 12 for what God had to say about people worshipping Him in the way Pagan do. I think we need to ask ourselves, who gets to decide how we worship our Creator... Us or Him.... he says that it is His way. I think I'll do it His way, because after all I love him and want to obey Him.
Post a Comment